The Watering hole, Monday, May 30, 2016: Will America Elect Yet Another Overtly Racist President?

America is far from perfect. We have achieved many great things in our history, but it has been despite our flaws, not because of them. And among the worst of our flaws is this country’s history of racism and white supremacy. Yes, not just the racism but the white supremacy, too. We on the Left post many words decrying white supremacists, but we rarely admit our country has elected many white supremacists POTUS, and they weren’t all Conservatives and/or Republicans and at least a few were Progressives and/or Democrats. As a Liberal, that bothers me. I want what’s best for everyone, and the color of one’s skin does not determine whether one is a human being or not. But there are many people, white people in particular, who feel this is not so; they feel that one’s skin color DOES determine how human one is. And sadly, these people often get elected to public office, where they are able to put their racist viewpoints into law. A President Donald J. Trump would be such a racist president.

It’s bad enough that Trump lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and lies, and, just for good measure, engages in promoting conspiracy theories. (This is not to mention the xenophobia, misogyny, birtherism and bullying tactics.) But Donald Trump’s overt racism is probably one of the least admirable things about him. And yet, it’s precisely the reason he is so admired among many of his supporters. White supremacist organizations of all kinds have been openly endorsing Trump, while he has renounced or even denounced so few of them. He had to lie (there’s no other word for it) and say he didn’t know much about David Duke, after the former KKK Grand Wizard publicly endorsed him, despite the fact that several years ago Trump publicly commented on David Duke and his association with the Klan. So why hem and haw over publicly rejecting his endorsement? Trump knew Duke was connected to the Klan. Is that not enough to say he doesn’t want Duke’s support? Why say he has to know more about him before commenting? And if Trump doesn’t want the support of white supremacists, why does he so often retweet their tweets? (He can’t claim he didn’t know when their screen name has “white genocide” in it.)

Many of Trump’s fans like him because, as they tell it, “He says what I’m thinking.” If that’s true of you, then you’re not thinking good thoughts. In fact, you’re talking like someone who wants to take us back to the 1940s and 1950s, when white men were generally (if often wrongly) perceived to be the most admired people in the country. (Are you Pat Buchanan, by any chance?) And you have a problem for which you should seek treatment. Trump appeals to people like you because he uses “Othering”, where all your problems are blamed on people who aren’t like you. In other words, people who are non-white, non-Christian, and non-American. Others. Others who can be scapegoated. It’s the very ugly secret behind Trump’s success to win the nomination of the party that, let’s be truthful here, appeals as hard as it can to low-information, low-effort-thinking, less-educated, and less-intelligent voters. People who have opinions not based on reality. Of course, as part of their juvenile “I know you are but what am I?”-style of debating, they accuse us of not being based in reality, because the way we see the world doesn’t match the way they see the world. I’m not just talking about the difference between the way Liberals and Conservatives see the world, I’m talking about people who believe so many things that are provably false. And they base their voting choice on who they think could best solve the problems of the world as they see them, meaning both their problems and the world. These people are either not very intelligent, or very afraid of something that isn’t going to happen to them. Do conservative voters in the Midwest states really believe ISIS is going to come to America and bring death and Sharia Law to them? Just because they’re taking over a country thousands of miles away from here, that doesn’t have the same history as our country, that doesn’t have the same religious makeup as ours, that wasn’t enjoying the same freedoms as ours, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen here. I mean, c’mon! I thought you folks loved our military. Have you no faith in their ability to defend us from whatever it is you imagine is going to happen to us? (And you are imagining it. It isn’t going to happen.) And whatever it is you fear is going to happen, do you really think an overtly racist president is the best choice to be commanding your military? Say what you will about Hillary Clinton (and many of you Trump supporters have been doing just that, even though much of it isn’t true, meaning grounded in the real reality), she doesn’t see our oversized military as the go-to solution where tact and diplomacy would work better. And neither does Bernie Sanders. And neither should you.

I really, really hope our country is better than to elect a crass, petulant, childish racist as our president. We deserve the consequences if we do.

The Watering Hole, Saturday, October 20, 2012 – Romnesia

Campaigning at George Mason University on Friday, President Barack Obama took a new approach to Governor Mitt Romney’s constant changes of position. He announced that we have to name this condition, and he suggested “Romnesia, a condition that causes one to forget their past statements and beliefs.”

[Transcript and video from Think Progress]

OBAMA: Now, I’m not a medical doctor but I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.
If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work – you might have Romnesia. If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care – you might have a case of Romnesia. If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be “delighted” to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases – man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia. […]

And if you come down with a case of Romnesia, and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for President, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions.

We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.

Of course, the president was just being polite. Mitt Romney is, without question, a habitual liar. People often say that every politician tells lies to get elected, but not like this guy, and not so often and about so many things. There isn’t an issue out there on which Mitt Romney hasn’t taken two or more positions, often contradictory.

On Monday night, the two candidates will meet in one last debate, this one centered on Foreign Policy. Now, Mitt Romney has no foreign policy credentials whatsoever. His money has spent more time in foreign countries than he has. His foreign policy advisers consist primarily of Bush Administration war hawks who think the second best cure to whatever ails America, after tax cuts, is War, especially if it’s based on the pretense of “defending Israel.” In fact, Republicans believe that every American president is constitutionally responsible for defending Israel, no matter what that nation’s government does. And they believe in the idea of pre-emptive warfare to “eliminate existential threats.” What are those, exactly? Well, technically, nobody can truly say because they exist only in people’s minds. They’re based on the loose idea that anything that might conceivably be used as a weapon against Israel is a threat whose existence justifies the use of military force to eliminate it. Thus, if Iran is enriching uranium for a modern electricity program, the idea that five or six years from now (or even two or three) they might be able to build a nuclear weapon becomes a morally justified use of military force. This makes total sense in the right-wing mind. By that rationale, because anyone who buys both a gun and the ammunition for it might one day kill an innocent person, Society would be justified in sentencing that person to death before they even got home. Doesn’t make sense, does it?

This is our Open Thread. You can discuss Romnesia or any other topic that tickles your fancy, though we prefer you not post any videos of your fancy being tickled.

[Cross-posted at Pick Wayne’s Brain.]

UPDATE: I found this on Twitter, a perfect example of Romnesia in action:

LOL #Romnesia http://t.co/xFF00hJN—
Margaret Baker (@KawaiiMagpie) October 11, 2012

The Watering Hole, Saturday, October 13, 2012 – Pitchin’ a Lie

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but Mitt Romney is a no-good goddamn fucking liar. There, I said it and I’m glad.

Okay, I'll say it. Mitt Romney is a no-good goddamn fucking liar! There, I said it and I'm glad. #p2 #ctl #Obama2012

— Wayne A Schneider (@WayneASchneider) October 9, 2012

Okay, it appears I have said it before. But it’s true. You can see a quick list compiled by Politifact (for what it’s worth), but he’s has told literally hundreds of lies on the campaign trail. And in the famous 47% video, he based an entire answer to a question on a lie. He claimed that all 47% of the people who did not pay any federal income taxes, for whatever reason, were not being responsible for their own lives. That includes the elderly who are retired and living on Social Security, the military who are overseas and putting their lives at risk every day, and the young people just starting out at their first jobs and, like the elderly and the military, not earning enough to owe federal income taxes. It’s not like he said that twelve years ago, it was just this past summer. And it’s not like nobody ever figured out until now why some people don’t pay federal income tax, any competent economist could have explained it in less than five minutes. But there he is lying, again. It seems that’s all Mitt Romney has for a stump speech – lies. Every day, he’s out there pitchin’ a lie.

By the way, this is also our Open Thread (a two-fer). Feel free to talk about Mitt Romney’s Lies, or any other topic you wish to bring up. And enjoy a fun little tune and a parody based on it.

Pitchin’ a Lie
Original Words and Music by Peter Callender and Mitch Murray
Additional Lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider

The dumb goes up when I go by
It’s nearly over now but here am I
Pitchin’ a lie, pitchin’ a lie
Gotta drive it home, make ’em see the light

It’s not so fair, but why complain?
They’re nearly frownin’ from my time at Bain
Pitchin’ a lie, pitchin’ a lie
Gotta drive it home, get ’em to my side

Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie
Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie

A distant call from far away
My money’s lonely so I’m on my way
Pitchin’ a lie, pitchin’ a lie
Gotta drive it home, keep ’em satisfied

Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie
Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie

The dumb goes up when I go by
But don’t nobody stop and analyze
Pitchin’ a lie, pitchin’ a lie
Gonna take too long, get ’em to my side

Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie
Lie, lie, lie, pitchin’ a lie
Lie, lie
Lie, lie
Lie, lie
Lie, lie

[Posted at Pick Wayne’s Brain.]

The Watering Hole – Saturday Aug 11, 2012 – Bearer of False Witness

Conservative evangelist David Barton, who likes to go around the country telling people he’s an historian, suffered a major setback this week when Thomas Nelson, the Christian publisher of his book, “The Jefferson Lies,” pulled the book from publication because it contained too many lies. And who could blame him them? Readers at the History News Network voted the book the “least credible history book in print.” But try not to weep too much for this Right-Wing Nut Job. He will publish the book under his own publishing company, Wall Builders, and is already selling the book at a discount.

What happened was that two conservative Christian professors, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, did some fact-checking and found that many of Barton’s claims about Jefferson simply didn’t hold up to objective scrutiny and published their findings in a book called “Getting Jefferson Right.” According to the Amazon website page for the book, some of the questions they answer include:

-Was Jefferson unable to free his slaves under Virginia law?

-Did Jefferson sign his presidential documents, “In the year of our Lord Christ?”

-Did Jefferson and other Founders finance a Bible in 1798 to get the Word of God to America’s Families?

-Did Jefferson found the Virginia Bible Society?

-Was Jefferson an orthodox Christian, who only rarely expressed questions about orthodox Christian doctrine?

-Did Jefferson edit the Gospels of the New Testament to remove sections he disagreed with?

-Did Jefferson found the University of Virginia to be the first transdenominational Christian college?

If you’ve ever watched David Barton being interviewed in a non-friendly setting (by which I mean some place other than Fox News Channel or Newt Gingrich’s bedroom), like The Daily Show, you can almost immediately see him employ his deflective tactics to weasel his way through the conversation. One of this favorite techniques is to re-define words in the middle of the discussion to “prove” that you don’t understand history as well as he does. He also likes to throw out obscure, difficult-to-disprove factoids, as evidence of his claims. And, as with many on the right, he likes to use the Straw Man argument, such as when he claimed that people everywhere call Jefferson an atheist, as evidenced by a billboard that went up somewhere, when most of us who know the truth know that’s not true. Jefferson really did believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, he just didn’t buy into all the divine miracles attributed to the man.

But Barton also likes to divert the conversation to what he believes are examples of Christians being denied their First Amendment right to practice their religion. He cites Pastor Mark Holick of Kansas, saying he was arrested just for trying to pass out Bibles to anyone who walked by. That’s not exactly what happened, or why he was arrested. He was arrested because he was blocking the entrance to a mosque while trying to get Muslims to take his Bibles. When a police officer told him to move up the sidewalk, he refused. This is but one example of the deception David Barton uses to sell his conservative Christian agenda. He so desperately wants to believe that the United States of America is NOT a secular nation (at least, according to the definition of “secular” that he claims the courts use) and that it is, in fact, a Christian nation (again, according to the definition of “Christian nation” that he likes to use.)

I recommend trying to sit through all the parts of the Daily Show interview, including the multi-part extended interview, with the Bearer of False Witness known as David Barton. I know it can be difficult to listen to this weasel in action, but I strongly urge you to refrain from giving into your desire to punch his smarmy little face with something big and heavy, like a bowling ball. Or you can do something else today because it’s Saturday! Yea!

This is our open thread. Feel free to discuss any topic you want.

Cross-posted at Pick Wayne’s Brain.

Watering Hole: Monday, April 2, 2012 – What’s That Phrase?

Lately, I’ve been hearing a phrase uttered by every Republican that has access to a microphone and the media.  It must be the phrase of the week or the month.  The teabaggers kept shouting this phrase as they protested in front of the Supreme Court this week.  They, along with Senator Pat “Wall Street” “Club for Growth” Toomey were protesting to “protect our freedoms”.  Others were there to support health care for all Americans.  There is no correlation between the two arguments and this is why there is no room for dialogue.

Some key Republican phrases:

• “Protecting our freedoms” – this is one that is currently popular and is a catch all phrase.  The Republicans are pushing this one even though they wrote, championed, and signed the Patriot Act.
• “I never supported [fill in the blank]”- this is known as the flip-flopper.  It doesn’t matter that the contradiction is recorded.  They will still deny, deny, and deny.
• “I misspoke” – this one is used to cover up the lies.  Republicans NEVER accept responsibility.
• “Job creators” – this one is used as an excuse to tax the 99% while giving tax breaks to the 1%.
• “I don’t recall” – this one was used to cover up the crimes.

Sounds like all the Republicans are reading from the same notebook.  They are so very boring and predictable.  I don’t understand why the Democrats can’t beat their dupas.

This is our Open Thread.  Add more, if you please. 

Only one provable lie?

Media Matters for America

“The media says, ‘Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies.’ Give me one example of a provable lie,” Breitbart said on stage at the Weiner presser. “One, journalist, one, put your reputation on the line here, one provable lie.”

How about a whole list of provable lies, you scum?

BIG FAT LIE:

Breitbart coordinated release of conservative activists’ undercover ACORN videos. On September 10, 2009, conservative activist and videographer James O’Keefe posted an entry to BigGovernment.com in which he revealed that he and fellow activist Hannah Giles had posed as a pimp and prostitute at a Baltimore ACORN Housing office and secretly filmed their meetings with ACORN staffers. As O’Keefe wrote, their intention was to take “advantage of ACORN’s regard for thug criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we could think of and seeing if they would comply — which they did without hesitation,” the “scenario” being the “trafficking of young helpless girls and tax evasion.”

Except they didn’t.  Upon viewing the un-edited videos, it was revealed that the ACORN workers did nothing wrong or illegal.  As it turns out, O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart are the liars in the ACORN case.

That’s one.

BIG FAT LIE:

Breitbart eagerly embraced and promoted [Jim] Hoft’s false attacks on [Kevin] Jennings.  Writing for the website Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft has authored a series of factually dubious attacks on Department of Education staffer Kevin Jennings and the organization Jennings founded and previously led, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Hoft’s Jennings posts — which he has labeled “Fistgate,” even though many of those allegations have little or nothing to do with the sexual practice of fisting — often draw upon the work of MassResistance, a Massachusetts based anti-gay organization that has been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

When you lie down with dogs…expect to get up with provable lies.

That’s two.

Conservative

Conservatives. What are you gonna do? You can’t reason with them, and you can’t take away their guns and shoot them with them. Not that I would want to. Shoot them with them. But you can’t reason with them. They just don’t operate from the same set of facts that we do. We liberals tend to believe that something is true because it can be proven to be true. But listening to today’s conservatives (of all stripes), it’s as if they believe something is true because enough people believe it to be true, regardless of whether or not it actually is true. And it is from this point of view that they debate things. Not from facts, but from beliefs. And it simply does not matter to them if whatever they believe is not actually true, as long as it supports the rest of their argument, they believe that their argument has merit. I admit that you can sometimes give them credit for following a proper chain of logic based on the propositions they put forth, but even then they sometimes veer from the strict discipline of logic and try to use their conclusion as their proof. But since their propositions are often wrong from the start, it makes no difference how reasonable they sound, they’re still wrong! (Or, if they’re right, it’s for the wrong reasons.) And so I wrote this song to them. I hope you like it.

Conservative
Original words and music “Conquistador” by Procol Harum, 1967
Additional lyrics by Wayne A. Schneider, 2009

Conservative, your argument’s in need of scrutiny
And with some devil’s talking points you speak of certainty
I see your litmus paper test
Has long since come to mean

Saddam Hussein was Involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing?

According to Frank Gaffney, yes, indeedy.

Yesterday, we had Ari Fleischer on Hardball saying that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and “how DARE” anyone say that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch. Today’s Hardball brought us Frank Gaffney, neocon extraordinaire, saying that not only was Saddam responsible for 9/11 but he had ties to the Oklahoma City bombing.

You can watch the video here (be prepared for a LOT of cross-talk as David Corn from The Nation tries to call Gaffney on his many, many lies.)

This begins at the 1:41 minute mark:

Gaffney:  He [Saddam] kept saying he was going to try to get even against us for Desert Storm, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable for people to conclude maybe that that’s what he was doing. There is also circumstantial evidence, not proven by any means,  but none the less some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq being involved with the people who perpetrated both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and even the Oklahoma City bombing.

Really?  Saddam Hussein was involved with Timothy McVeigh in blowing up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995?  I imagine this is another attempt at “It’s All Clinton’s Fault!” which is the biggest bunch of rubbish to spill from these rubbish-filled neoconservatives yet.

I cannot believe that there are so many people out there on this Bush Revisionism Legacy Tour ™ who can easily spit out such lies, lies I might add, which have been repeatedly debunked – this one (Iraq and 9/11) by George W. Bush, no less!

I hope Chris Matthews brings this up tomorrow and slams Gaffney for this outrageous lie.

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McCain’s Propaganda Machine

John McCain has opted to enlist a group of foreign nationals to write positive letters to the editors to “get out a positive message” about John McCain and Sarah Palin. Phil Tuchman, a McCain campaign worker, tells his ghostwriting team that they can be whomever they choose to be when writing these letters. It matters not. Just write something positive about McCain and have several people send out similar letters to various editors around the country.

Salon reports this from one of those ghostwriters, Margriet Oostveen, who is Dutch.

“You can be whoever you want to be,” says an inviting Phil Tuchman. “You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!”

Today he is training six ghostwriters. What on earth is the appeal of McCain for the former Soviet bloc? Last time I was here, an exuberant Polish guy was phone banking next to me. Today, a Russian in yellow suspenders is shimmering at the same table, looking just like an actor who is famous in the Netherlands for star turns as a genius who suppresses his dark side with painstaking self-control.

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want — as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. “Your letters,” says Phil Tuchman, “will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we’ll place them in local newspapers.”

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper’s editors decided that.

“We will show your letters to our supporters in those states,” explains Phil. “If they say: ‘Yeah, he/she is right!’ then we ask them to sign your letter. And then we send that letter to the local newspaper. That’s how we send dozens of letters at once.”

No newspaper can refuse a stream of articulate expressions of support, is the thought behind it. “This way, we will always get into some letters column.”

It is the day after Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention. Today, she is our main subject. The others are already enthusiastically hammering their keyboards. I am struggling with a tiny writer’s block. “Dear Editor …”

(snip)

“That is why Senator John McCain could count on my vote from day one.”

“With Sarah Palin, I have even more reason to trust in victory. She represents my heart.”

“Sincerely …” I leave the dots for somebody else’s signature.

Phil bends over my computer screen and reads. This takes a while. I am expecting roars of laughter or to be kicked out. Then he says drily: “I like that. It appeals to the hearts of people. Can you write more letters?”

It worked when the Pentagon sent paid generals out en masse to the media to sell the war. It worked when Ronald Reagan enlisted a small group of people (three to be exact) to start a big-name organization (the George C. Marshall Institute) to counter all of the scientific complaints about his beloved Star Wars defense system…along with the other propaganda Reagan espoused. This is the basis for how Global Warming deniers operate today.

A small group of psudo-scientists get equal time against a mass of real scientists. Ironically, it was the Fairness Doctrine which allowed this to begin. The George C. Marshall Institute started with three members who were vocal, wrote letters to the editors en masse (just as McCain is doing) and threatened to sue, under the Fairness Doctrine, if their viewpoint was not heard. Then, one of these three “scientists” with an agenda, was given one-to-one airtime with a scientist who represented more than six thousand scientific voices (at that time, relating to Star Wars). We see the exact same thing playing out today in relation to Global Warming.

Since McCain has taken to lying about everything and anything, why not enlist a group of foreign nationals to a propaganda campaign of his very own.

: : : : : : : : : :

An Open Letter to John McCain (An Obituary)

Dear Sen. McCain,

Thank you so much for your frank honesty as of late. It’s interesting that the limitless ambition, which has set you on a path of never ending falsehoods in its way makes you the most honest politician of the last century.

Even the media doesn’t believe you, and is more and more willing to say so. I’m not sure that one man has ever been so honest without actually attempting to be.

Every day I see you on television, I hear the same message: “I’m John McCain, and I’ll say anything you want to hear to get elected. I even nominated this dingbat to please you wacked-out ‘feminist’ types. Sure, she doesn’t know the first thing about foreign policy, energy, economics, or well… pretty much anything, but she does bring certain qualities to my ticket. She’s a woman…. okay, I guess that’s only one quality, but you gotta admit, it’s an important one. I mean, that’s all you dames really wanted right? Some pretty face on the ticket?”

Well, yes, Johnny Boy, I do agree it’s important. It’s important in that it tells us just how little you value your own nation. How does a man go from sacrificing his own freedom from the horrors of Vietnam to sacrificing his own integrity in order to place himself in the highest office in the land, especially at a time when his party’s ideology — deregulation, tax cuts, war upon war — is so at odds with the solutions this country needs?

There has long been an expression of liars whose pants catch fire. Well, Mr. McCain, I’m frankly surprised that you haven’t spontaneously combusted over the last month. Forget the pants; I’d be less than surprised if you burst into flames next week during the first debate.

And yet, just as a Viking who is set out to sea aboard a flaming vessel following his death, if would fit you to go out in much the same way. Just as the Vikings, you have proven yourself a plunderer without morals or ethics, and whatever there was of the “Maverick McCain” (if such a man ever existed), he has long since died. It’s time we sent his memory out into the distant waters to be forgotten, to be consumed by the flames of his own ambition.

Good luck in your next life, Senator. I can only hope your sins do not follow your through that black corridor you have created for yourself.

Sincerely,
Big Blue

: : : : : : : : : :

John McCain is a Liar

: : : : : : : : : :

Republicans Are on Fantasy Island

McCain: Dishonorable and Despicable

: : : : : : : : : :

In response to an ad that the Obama camp put out along with a speech Barack Obama gave today concerning education, John McCain shot back with a dishonorable, despicable and disingenuous ad in essence saying that that scary black man is going to sexually harm your children. The McCain ad is disgusting. Again, McCain decides that lies are better than truth. Since he has no issues on his side, he has to scare the electorate into voting not for McCain but against Obama.

Are you frightened yet?

Reproductive Health Reality Check notes:

The issue of age-appropriate sex ed was also discussed at the You Tube debate during the primaries where candidates Edwards and Obama both clearly discussed the fact that it is important to teach young kids about “wrong touching” in case adult relatives, teachers or clergy prey upon them.

Bill Burton from Obama camp responded quickly to this smear campaign by saying:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why.”

Just how disingenuous was this ad?  Everything Senator McCain approved for this ad is a lie.  Really? you say.  Yes, really.

Palin says Yes to Road to Nowhere (Her Own Words)

UPDATE:  This post was originally titled the Bridge to Nowhere.  It is in fact about The Road to Nowhere; an adjunct project with the Bridge to Nowhere.

The “Road To Nowhere” is a $375 million “mega-project” designed to connect Juneau to the towns of Haines and Skagway via 50 miles of new road along the steep slopes of an avalanche-battered canal, ending at a ferry terminal at the Haines river.

The communities directly affected – Haines (population 2,400), Skagway (population 870) and Juneau (population 31,000) – have voiced opposition to the road for a host of good reasons: it is a waste of money; with at least two dozen avalanche chutes, it will be too dangerous to drive in winter, which is most of the year; we already have a fine ferry system that gets us just about everywhere we need to go in all kinds of weather; some places are too nice to be paved over.

Oh, and did I mention that the road won’t fulfill its ostensible mission? The whole purpose of the new road was to connect Juneau to the Klondike Highway at Skagway, so that Alaskans who live in the interior would be able to drive to the state capital rather than rely on planes and ferries. But now the road is going to stop in the middle of the wilderness, 18 miles south of Skagway. Earlier this month, the Federal Highway Administration announced it would not finance a road that went through Skagway’s Gold Rush-era park, a national landmark. The result? We’re on course to get a $300 million road to nowhere.

(snip)

“[In canceling the 11-mile strip Palin] wasn’t aiming to kill this dubious project, which doesn’t even connect Juneau to the rest of Alaska’s road system. (It is essentially a 50-mile driveway to a new ferry terminal on Lynn Canal). Her administration has been moving forward with the project, estimated to cost $374 million. That is almost as much as the nationally infamous $398 million Ketchikan bridge to Gravina Island, which Palin did kill.”

(Another thing that ties the Bridge to Nowhere with its Road counterpart: the first $15 million for the Juneau road was included in the same bloated transportation bill that had Sen. Ted Steven’s most notorious pork project.)

And this from the Anchorage Daily News on the matter.

h/t: ThinkProgress